Annus horribilis. Those two words could describe the year 1907 from the point of view of Gustav Mahler (1860–1911). At the end of May, political intrigues fuelled by growing antisemitism forced him to resign as music director of the Vienna Court Opera, a post he had held since 1897. Then, in July, Mahler’s four-year-old daughter, Maria Anna, died of a combination of diphtheria and scarlet fever. Alma, Mahler’s wife, was not spared health problems either, while the composer himself was diagnosed with a heart condition, forcing him to give up a number of activities he enjoyed—long hikes in the mountains, cycling, swimming, and rowing. In the end, it was by working that Mahler sought solace from the wounds inflicted by those months. The family sold their villa near Wörthersee in Carinthia, where they had been staying, and Mahler set sail for New York with his wife and younger daughter, Anna. Already in January of the following year, he took up the post of director of the Metropolitan Opera. After a successful first season in America, Mahler returned to Europe in May 1908 for the summer, settling in Toblach, South Tyrol. He is said never to have spoken about the sorrow caused by the death of his beloved daughter, but the profound impact of the events of 1907 is evident, for example, in a letter to the conductor Bruno Walter, in which he writes: “In an instant, I lost everything I had achieved and everything I had been. At the end of my life, I must now learn to stand and walk again, like a newborn.” For Mahler, relearning to walk meant above all finding a new desire to work and a new approach to composition. He succeeded in doing so, and spent the summer of 1908 working on a new composition—a symphony for alto, tenor, and orchestra based on texts from the poetry collection The Chinese Flute.
Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth) was the ninth work in Mahler’s symphonic output. The myth of the “Curse of the Ninth”—the belief that composers who reached their Ninth Symphony would die while working on it or soon after completing it—terrified Mahler. He therefore avoided calling the work a symphony or giving it a number, even though The Song of the Earth is symphonic in both scale and structure. It was only his next work, which he began composing in the summer of 1908, that he titled his Ninth Symphony. The composer did not succeed in “cheating fate”, as his wife Alma later described it. He did not live to see the premieres of either Das Lied von der Erde or his Ninth Symphony, dying in May 1911 at age 50, and leaving an unfinished Tenth Symphony as well.
Die chinesische Flöte (The Chinese Flute) was a collection of Chinese poetry paraphrased by the German poet Hans Bethge. It was published in 1907, and Mahler discovered it soon afterwards. It returned to his attention shortly before his departure from New York, when he met the renowned sinologist Friedrich Hirth. The texts of the ancient Chinese poets impressed Mahler because they captured all the aspects of life he was confronted with—joy and pleasure on the one hand, melancholy, sorrow, and the inescapable finiteness of being on the other. The composer poured his deepest feelings into the music, and working on it had an invigorating effect on him. “I can’t yet say what the whole work will be called. I’ve been granted some beautiful moments, and I believe this will be the most personal thing I’ve done so far”, he wrote to Bruno Walter in September.
Mahler set six of the poems as six movements of a symphonic cycle, contrasting in tempo, mood, orchestration, and the solo voices employed. The full force of the orchestra is heard in the first, fourth, and sixth poems, while elsewhere the writing has a distinctly intimate, at times exotic character. Like in some of his earlier symphonies, Mahler augments the standard orchestra with mandolin, celesta, tam-tam, tambourine, and glockenspiel. He entrusted the first, third, and fifth poems to male voice, while a female voice sings the other three. The tenor movements are for the most part more rhythmically and harmonically exuberant, reflecting the irony of life and alternating a certain defiant light-heartedness with feelings of profound sadness. The alto movements offer a conciliatory, more lyrical, and often more melodic contrast. Although Mahler departed from the traditional four-movement symphony format, the six movements can nevertheless be understood as falling into four larger sections. The Drinking Song of Earth’s Misery opens the symphony, beginning with a three-note horn motif that recurs several times throughout the movement. Likewise, the refrain “Dark is life, dark is death” recurs throughout. Mahler often pushes the vocal line into an intense high register, treating the instrumental parts in much the same way, forcing the tenor to assert himself against them. The Lonely Man in Autumn brings a sense of calm and can be understood as the second movement of a classical symphonic cycle. It takes the form of a lament for a life that is coming to an end, for flowers that are withering, and for the sun whose light is fading. The songs Of Youth, Of Beauty, and The Drunken Man in Spring serve as a three-movement symphonic scherzo, bringing new energy in music that is at times melancholy, at times pastorally joyful, with countless moments of tone painting imitating birdsong and evoking Mahler’s love of mountain scenery. The Farewell is one of Mahler’s most powerful movements. Lasting half an hour, the symphony’s finale is almost as long as all the preceding movements combined, gathering all their contrasts into itself. Mahler alternates passages in major and minor keys and intimate writing with fuller orchestral textures. The music once again brings to mind the transience of human life and earth’s never-ending beauty. Above the fading orchestral accompaniment, the word “ewig” (“forever”) is heard nine times, each time more quietly, until it fades away completely.
